Often Asked - How-to Make Bells / Instruments Sound Good on Zoom

[Hōkan]

• Bell sounds on Zoom are sucky.
• The suckyness is caused by Zoom's Active Noise Cancellation.
• There can be an end to Zoom's bell sound suckyness.
• Attached is a .pdf outlining the path to end Zoom's bell sound suckyness.
  How to Sound A Bell in a Zoom Meeting.pdf

(And, please let me know if I've gotten things wrong!)

I sat this morning.

[Jakuden]

Yes this has been an ongoing issue, Hokan! Another result besides the poor sound quality is that sometimes the Doshi doesn't hear every bell, say during a roll-down, where they need to bow or prostrate etc. I will be interested to hear what Sekishi says about your fix because if it works, it would be helpful during Zazenkai.

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday

[Shonin Risa Bear]

We have been using "Original Sound" at Bird Haven with good results from desktop environments but our iPad users can't seem to find this setting and the clunks have continued. I will pass this along.

gassho
d shonin sat and lah

[Seishin]

Zoom tends to cause havoc with its noise cancellation, which is obviously great for meetings but not good for playing/singing in open mics online or bells. Using "original sound" will definitely cure this but I am confused why there is a need to switch it off and on just for bell ringing. If some one more technical can explain that please do but in my experience, it should be ok to leave it on, which is what we tend to do for online open mics.

sat

[Ryumon]

Also, something changed in a recent Zoom update. I've been having shakuhachi lessons for a long time, and for the first time, last week, my teacher's audio kept cutting out, as Zoom was trying to cancel sounds. This with with the noise cancellation off.

Gassho,

Ryūmon

sat

[Hōkan]

I figure that noise suppression and echo cancellation are wonderful technologies that are usually good things to have (except when sounding bells). If you have a situation where it seems better to leave "original sound" turned on, that's fine.

Know that if you are the one turning on "original sound" you won't hear any difference so check with other participants to make sure of their perception of the sound quality at their end.

Sat.

[Sekishi]

Hi all,

Sorry for being slow on diving into this thread. Bion, Seikan, and I did some testing with Zoom settings a month or two back, and documented what we found to be the best results when using inkin, kesu, mokugyu, chanting, etc. Obviously, this information is mostly only useful for the Ino (anyone else who is joining the Zazenkai can leave their settings alone).

I've used these settings the past few times I've been Ino for the Zazenkai. When I've gone back and listened on youtube, they do seem to be improved over what they used to sound like.

---

First: Mac-specific settings. There is nothing analogous under Linux (from my experience anyway). There may be something similar under Windows and Chrome OS, but I do not know. If anyone knows, please let us know.

- Settings icon on top right > Sound > Input

- Select device: Internal Microphone (or whatever is appropriate for your setup)
-- Adjust the microphone volume manually: Look at view meter and test chanting, mokugyu, inkin, etc.: the meter should go almost all the way to the right
-- Use ambient noise reduction: NO

---

Second: Zoom Settings

- Zoom > Settings / Gear > Audio

- Microphone:
-- Automatically adjust microphone volume: NO
--- This is really important ... we found most of the issue with the bells and/mokygyo were due to this setting
-- Adjust the microphone volume manually: Look at view meter and test chanting, mokugyu, inkin, etc.: the meter should go almost all the way to the right

- Suppress background noise: LOW

- Music and Professional Audio
-- Show in-meeting option to enable "Original Sound": YES
--- Enable these options when original sound is on:
---- High-fidelity music mode: YES
---- Echo cancelation: YES (but YMMV - some rooms / computers may need this, others may not)
---- Stereo audio: NO (unless you have stereo mics set up, but most computers and/or webcams will be mono)
--- Note that these changes will not themselves alter anything - but they will cause the "original sound" option to display in Zoom and set what exactly changes when clicking it.
-- The Ino should absolutely click "original sound" for the Zazenkai.

---

I hope this helps.

Gassho,
Sekishi
#sat #lah

[Zenkon]

I lost my cheat sheet with instructions on how to cut and paste text so that the pasted text shows as a green highlighted area. Its something like (QUOTE) xxx(QUOTE/), but im doing something wrong. Can someone let me know the correct way to cut and paste. Thanks

Gassho

Zenkon

[Koushi]

Hi there Zenkon,

To put things in the floating green quote box, put things in between two QUOTE blocks, like this:

[QUOTE ]
text here
[/QUOTE ]

just remove the space between the E and ]. Let me know how it goes!

Gassho,
koushi
ST

[Shonin Risa Bear]

Screen Shot 2022-08-31 at 7.14.33 AM.jpg

^click to enlarge

gassho
ds satlah